Hopefully this many people care enough tomorrow to show up at the 12 noon “rally” to celebrate the fact that the Orioles have finally done the right thing and restored “BALTIMORE” to the away jerseys.

Whether its been through our SunTrust text service, e-mails or blog comments, reaction has been strong and varied on the subject of whether or not we should unveil the jerseys today — here, at WNST.net.

Unveil? Or not?

We have copies of the jerseys and the hat that they’re unveiling tomorrow. I think the hats are horrible, but that’s just my opinion. Obviously, since I campaigned for the word “BALTIMORE” to be on the jerseys for the better part of four years, I’m elated at the new jersey I’ve seen.

You can see the new look tomorrow at noon. Or you can see it here at WNST.net today.

To unveil or not?

A lot of you who have reached out to us today think we should absolutely show the jerseys and hat today.

Some of you have been STRONG about it, in fact. Almost demanding…actually.

And some of you think we’re totally in the wrong for even THINKING about unveiling the new jersey and hat in advance of the team.

Some of you were STRONG about that, too.

Oddly enough, we’re sort of in a no-win position, because no matter what we do, we’ll have some group in anger-mode. If we DON’T show the new uniforms, some of you will wonder why and take issue with the fact that we’re “giving in” to an organization that has treated me (us) unprofessionally over the last two years or so. If we DO show them, many of you will say, “how can you ever expect the team to stop treating you unprofessionally when you constantly do stuff to anger them?”

For the record, I reached out to Greg Bader today (Communications Director) to chat with him about this whole thing. My contacts at OPACY tell me this whole “rally” is Bader’s baby…he’s taken great pride in being the voice over at the Warehouse who has championed this whole “Baltimore on the jersey thing”. Oddly enough, Bader was the voice AGAINST it in May of 2007. But why worry about that now, right?

So, I’m assuming that’s why Greg didn’t get back to me (again) today. He’s just plain swamped with stuff to do for tomorrow’s event. But it should be noted that once again – for probably the 44th time since last May – I contacted Bader as a member of the media and received no response from him. Too bad we can’t make up a jersey for him that has “Bush League” on the front instead of “Baltimore”. But I digress.

The issue remains, do we unveil the jerseys and hat?

Actually, that’s really not the issue, because we all know in the end that the team will likely “leak” the new look to whomever they want in town…right? The issue is: should we show it off before THEY do?

It’s competition, really. Nothing more, nothing less. They have the new uniforms and they’re going to unveil them tomorrow.

We have copies of the new uniforms and we have the ability to unveil them today.

Who wins?

It’s a competition, like I said.

Everyone LIKES to win. Or, at the very least, people who enjoy competing like to win.

In the end, here’s why we are NOT going to unveil them today.

Because for the last few years we’ve been (the fans who have stopped going to the games – in droves) demanding that the team do the right thing. We’ve demanded they start caring more about Baltimore. We’ve demanded they return the word BALTIMORE to the road jersey. We’ve demanded, for the most part, that they stop caring so much about what THEY want and start caring more about what THE BALTIMORE FANS want.

Tomorrow, they’re going to meet those demands.

Yeah, we’d like to see winning baseball in Baltimore too, but tomorrow, on November 12, there’s nothing they can do about that. Instead, tomorrow, they’re going to do something about re-connecting with the city of Baltimore. It’s the only thing they can do tomorrow to make the fans happy.

They’ve finally listened.

We thought long and hard about unveiling the uniforms today. Around 11:30 am, we decided to do it. Around 12:15 we decided against it. At 12:45, we said, “what the hell…let’s go ahead and unveil them.”

And five minutes ago, we made the final decision not to do it.

You’ll see them tomorrow at noon. And hopefully, you’ll attend the Rally and spend some money at Harborplace during the lunch hour gathering. Lord knows Harborplace has suffered greatly with the attendance-decrease at OPACY over the years. Tomorrow, in a small way, you can make their mid-week a little better by buying a sandwich, salad or soup from one of the businesses in the Inner Harbor.

If by NOT posting the new jerseys and new hat we’ll add $10.00 to someone’s cash register at Harborplace on Wednesday, we’ve helped out more than we would have by posting the pictures we have in our possession.

We’ll be there at 12 noon tomorrow celebrating with all of you that make it to Harborplace.